The Sweet Escape (Digital Album)

by

Gwen Stefani

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Gwen's second solo album,"The Sweet Escape" manages to incorporate various styles to offer 12 distinctly unique tunes. It opens with "Wind it Up", sampling the Sound of Music's "Lonely Goat Herd", singing about being a girl, and exactly why boys adore them. Suddenly you realise you've missed having Ms. Stefani in your life.

She collaborates with Pharrell on "Orange County Girl", "Yummy", "Breakin' Up" and "U Started It".

Other big names who contribute to the album include Akon on "The Sweet Escape" and No Doubt's Tony Kanal on "4 In the Morning", "Fluorescent and Don't Get It Twisted". Keane's Tim Rice-Oxley collaborated with Gwen on the smooth, soft rock "Early Winter".

A mistress of the synthetic sound, with lyrics that allude to smart girlie conversations over a cuppa, Gwen's taken all the big hitters, ranging from Nellee Hooper to Keane's Tim Rice-Oakley to contribute. She's mixed them all up, soaking up trends that ensure she's played in all the gyms and Topshops nationwide, but she's not letting anyone take over. She's big enough for all of them.

Topics span apologising for being grumpy ("The Sweet Escape") men who lie, making her cry (the Cardigans-esque "Early Winter"), and being an unremarkable small town girl, a la J. Lo ("Orange County girl").

As with her first album there are a few bland fillers, and she seems to lose her way a bit with "Breakin' up", a track about frustrating mobile conversations, but there's enough trademark majorette drumming to carry the album off. "Yummy" sums her up, coquettish, amusing, annoying and hip wiggling in equal measure.

"The Sweet Escape" lives up to the promise. Never afraid to try something new and create something completely fresh, Gwen succeeds in staying cutting edge.

In this album she manages to create a sound that is simultaneously cutting edge and completely different to her older work, yet "The Sweet Escape" remains distinctly Gwen Stefani.

An element of Gwen's success has to be ascribed to her collaborations with some industry bigwigs. She is unafraid to cross genres and draws inspiration from everyone she works with - resulting in an album that offers a great deal of varied sounds and influences.

All this and a new baby. Not bad.

Enjoy !

Continuing her "solo project" as she claims, Gwen's second record is a mixture of success and failure. The first single `wind it up' is just awful it has a decent/so so beat but her whiny vocals and lyrics that continue the infatuation she has with her own clothing line get played out real quick. Moving on, the record does produce some catchy and genuinely enjoyable tracks; `the sweet escape' is one and `early winter' another. The latter with its strong chorus line and great music backing it up help the listener forget the previous track `orange county girl' which is really hard to hear all the way through (mind you the song is only three minutes and some seconds). I hate to say this but a white pop singer should not be rapping about growing up in orange county. All the songs produced by the neptunes (a.k.a. pharrell) are stupid, awkward and generic with the exception of `u started it' a very refreshing tune(pharrell's music production ability is over rated anyway). Please Gwen, stop trying to be ghetto fabulous and please please stop rapping/ yelling/ speaking fast etc. I suppose because `hollaback girl' was such a success she decided to evoke that theme more on this record but it does not work. Tracks like `breaking up' and `yummy' just skip right past them because you will be disappointed as they do not capture a positive side of Gwen (too fake even for her). On the contrary Gwen shines when she sings more 80's Madonna influential stuff and sticks to the new wave genre; tracks such as `florescent', `wonderful life'(which is a really good song reminding me of depeche mode), and `don't get it twisted' show a much more charismatic and genuine Gwen. Ironically the two or three songs produced by her band mate T. Kanal show case Gwen's vocal talent and remind fans why they even bothered to purchase (or even download) the record.